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Crocodoc Personal as an Educator tool.

When our homeschool cooperative starts back in the Fall I will be teaching two courses that require students to turn in written work. As part of my preparation this summer I am evaluating whether or not I want to continue receiving physical papers in class or require students to turn in their weekly work electronically.

At this point I am leaning toward electronic submissions not so much because I want my classroom to go green (though that is one of my listed pros), but also because uploading and sharing/receiving documents online is a skill set they will use in their academic futures.

Some of my students will homeschool through high school into college while others will move back into public or private schools prior to graduation, but either way they will all be required to submit papers electronically at some point. As their teacher I feel a responsibility to put them through the paces of online paper submission in addition to their writing paces.

With that in mind, I have spent the last couple of days playing with Crocodoc Personal, a free online platform that lets users work with, edit and review Word documents, fill-out PDF forms, as well as mark up images, without the need for Flash or any additional plugins.

It takes only seconds to sign up, has a very clean interface, and is simple to understand and use. Let me walk you through a few of the ways users can interact with documents using one of the Crocodoc sample documents.

After selecting “Annotate” a drop down tool bar appears that allows multiple choices for how I can interact with any of my students’ uploaded or shared documents.

For instance, if I want to comment on a select area of text I can choose to point to it, highlight an entire area, or simply write a text comment.

Please note, if working with a PDF file the user doesn’t actually edit the PDF, but rather makes notes “atop” it.

The draw tool is a handy visual way to quickly bring attention to a specific area of text; it is available in black, red, blue or green “ink”.

When I select “Point Comment” from the tool bar’s drop down menu it places a red pointer tag which points to a comment area to the right of the text. This is similar to the mark-up choices available in other programs like Google Docs, but what I like about this program is the ability for users to reply to the comment. For instance, if I left a note that was more of a question than a correction, a student can reply with an answer or clarification.

Highlighting is available in four light shades – yellow, orange, green or blue.

Users can also strikeout a string of text.

And finally, it is easy to download documents, both in the original format and in marked-up format.

Crocodoc allows multiple users to collaborate in real-time on projects, though that isn’t necessarily a feature I would need for either of my courses. However, I do love that the online platform shows the changes/edits each time they are made, does not erase previous work, and allows students to see each and every revision.

Plus, unlike other similar platforms, Crocodoc Personal is highly visual. I can make it look like I wrote on it – circling areas of interest, typing notes (or writing notes if I was skilled enough with a mouse or touchpad), highlighting and striking out text.

One review clarified that Crocodoc does not have the issue that Google Docs has where documents often lose a portion of their original formatting when viewed. This makes it easier for students to submit documents – once uploaded their documents should render the same in Crocodoc Personal as it does in Word.

The only criticism I have so far is that Crocodoc Personal does not allow me to create a homepage for my class, which means I will have to retain all of the URLs for my students’ accounts in order to view their papers in the shared files they create. I have a feeling this will change in the future as the platform picks up popularity as an educator tool.

I’m still determining if this is the right platform for me to use. If you are an educator what online platforms do you use for reviewing your students’ written work and what is your system?

Heather Sanders

Hi. I’m Heather, a freelance writer living in Huntsville, a smallish town on the tail-end of the East Texas Pineywoods.
Twenty years ago, I married Jeff, the love of my life, and shortly after, we chose to “go forth and multiply.” We have three kids: Emelie, Meredith and Kenny. We homeschool. It's what we do, and it works for us.
Tired of feeling overwhelmed, we recently "faithsized" our family into a 960 square foot lake cabin in need of renovation. I write at HeatherSanders.com about faith and simplifying your desires so you can be content right here and right now

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SarahT

Hi! I taught online college courses for a year, and my students submitted papers electronically. We used it through the college’s online dropbox, and I commented and graded using Microsoft word, then I re-uploaded to the college’s online dropbox for the students to see and download. The downside of this is that I have a copy of their original and my corrected document on my computer that I must now archive/organize/save (an additional action step(s) for me). So it sounds like you can do all of this in crocodoc without taking up space on your computer or making extra work for yourself.

Here are a couple considerations….
Make sure you have your instructions for submitting clearly posted for your class. I had more questions about submitting work than I did about the class itself (that may be an exaggeration…but not much of one!!)

Test it on different platforms. Make sure it works similarly for Mac, PC, laptop, desktop, mobile devices, tablets, etc.

Is there a “work offline” way to work on grading? I know for me, I had a schedule of getting a certain number of papers graded per day or I couldn’t get them done in a timely manner. Once we were without internet for 3 days due to no fault of my own. After that happened and I spent those 3 days scrambling for ways to get my class work done, I had a different workflow. I downloaded all the papers the day they were due, graded them offline, then uploaded them in a batch.

That being said, Crocodoc looks like a great tool!! I like the visual edits that look like you hand graded the paper. I missed that when I had to grade using Word.

Lisa

Thank you so much for this! I don’t homeschool, but I do work with teachers and I think they will be very interested in this!

Rebe

This sounds like a great tool and a skill they will need! I’m in grad school and have yet to turn in a hard copy paper besides my final 200 page proposal plan. One thing I would think about is if there is a way to help students learn how to collaborate together on a paper through on-line tools. Although it doesn’t sound like this program works for collaboration during the writing process, my classes are completely group project based and every time a new project starts one of the first questions is “Who’s going to set up the Google Doc”? I hate Google Docs for many of the same reasons you gave – the formatting issues! – but it’s the easiest thing we’ve found to allow multiple collaborators on a single project (and we’re getting our degrees in Information so we try to keep up on what’s out there).

I think the on-line collaborative part of the process is a much harder skill than simply turning in and receiving graded work back online. (After all Word can have tracked/timed comments that could just be emailed w/out another 3rd party program.) And as much as I would like to say people will get together to work on things in person – life is busy in college and sometimes it is much easier to meet on the Google Doc (which has a chat function and also allows question/answer type comment notes) than in person.

Again this may or may not be something that is important for your students where they are right now, but it will be a reality in their futures! If I were still teaching, I might consider doing it for a writing assignment that isn’t as big so the skill of learning how to collaborate on-line successfully becomes the main focus. Or maybe that is the focus of another class option at your co-op in which case, ignore everything and have fun preparing for your classes – sometimes I miss doing things like that over my summer breaks! 🙂

Beth

I use Gaggle.net which my district has a subscription to. I believe there used to be free accounts (but I’m not sure if there are any more. I can do many of the things you mentioned – but it also has safe, filtered email, chat, social walls, and SMS texting. There are digital lockers and Homework Drop Boxes and filtered YouTube videos. It is a great solution for me – I teach Reading and Language Arts (mostly Writing.) I can assign prompts and students can turn in their work digitally. I definitely think you’re on the right track to find a way for your students to do the same thing.

http://www.oursmallhours.com Our Small Hours

Nice! I’ll have to check that out!

Rebe S

This looks like a great tool – I’m going to look into for my life as a grad student. We often have collaborative projects and the first question is always “who’s going to set up the Google Doc?” and we hate Google Docs mostly because of the formatting issues! Maybe this will be a better alternative. Because I’m at a University, all of our paper submissions go through the university web-based collaborative portal so I don’t have much say in how to submit. I did have a professor who requested an emailed PDF and a Word document and she would return all of our edits in the “tracked changes” section of Word. Even so, Google Docs and Word both convert to PDF w/ the click of an icon so it’s not a big deal.

I used to teach, however, and for what it’s worth, I WOULD consider having one writing assignment or project that was about the collaborative tools on this site, Google Docs or somewhere else. The focus could be more on using the collaborative functions instead of the writing but it would be worth it to your students. The on-line collaborative part of writing (or planning a project at the very least) is much harder. When you consider all of the question/answer comments (that google does allow), chat functions and color coding to see who is doing what, plus trying not to overlap and all do the same thing leaving parts of the project unfinished is a skill they will need to have.

Many of my grad school assignments are group projects and as much as we would like to meet in person – it just is not going to happen. Most of our work is done completely through Google Docs/Calendar (setting up meeting times in a chat, figuring out who is planning what, writing what, editing what, final touches, final edit, who gets to turn it in etc.) and that can be far more crucial skill of online work than understanding how to upload a document to a 3rd party website, turn it in and then read teacher comments when it’s returned. IMHO, turning in the assignments online will probably be one of the easiest things your students ever do on the Internet. It’s all the online stuff getting to that point that is the skillful part.

Favor F.

We use Dropbox. It’s free and easy. It may not provide all the necessary tools you are looking for. My kids use it in their college courses, so do I as well as in the standard classroom.
If I need to edit content I use Jing. It is a couple of extra steps but I find it works well. I am editing images or graphics most of the time so it may be easier for that purpose rather than a typed paper. My kids are taking the graphics courses I took with my books through me just to gain some experience and knowledge prior to taking the full college classes.

I used both Dropbox and Jing for my classes.
Your program looks very interesting, eliminates the need for an Adobe purchase. I will be checking it out, thanks for the write up.

http://rkphotographystudio.com Becki K.

Looks like a neat tool, however it has the same editing components that Microsoft Word offers. My only question would be wouldn’t it be more valuable for students to gain experience using Microsoft Word editing/review changes, rather than a different software platform that will probably not be utilized in their future workplace?

I was in public relations for many years prior to staying at home and the number of interns and new hires that were unfamiliar with editing changes in Microsoft Word was shocking! Especially since we relied on it as a way to make changes to documents and track our versions on a shared drive. If going electronic, why not just accept the submissions in Word, and edit them in Word so that the students have the opportunity to review the changes and familiarize themselves with the review/track changes features?

It looks like a neat program though!

Katie D in LBK

Tactics depend on the professor and the class. A lot of them take electronic submission of Word documents by email that they annotate using comments and send back. Some set up a class website each semester which is usually either Blackboard [upload .doc(x), .pdf, or a text file or enter text directly into an online test/quiz], the university web building software [which is currently changing], or something like one of Shutterfly’s free sites that you can control access to [ie make private] while still letting members upload and comment.

Of course, for copies of my ever longer dissertation, my major professor and I have a shared Dropbox folder.

Sandy

My husband and I use Dropbox to share household info (budgets, photos, etc.) but I hadn’t thought about its usefulness for larger sharing. Good idea!

Susan B

I use Edmodo – our county has a subscription for it. All my classes are set up in it. They can drop their presentations in it and I can grade it from there. You can also utilize the program from tests and forms.

Rebe

This is definitely a skill they will use – and I’m going to look into this for my work in grad school so thank you for this post. Right now we use Google Docs for many reasons including the University of Michigan’s email is hosted through Google so it’s easy to have everything in one place but the formatting issues are so annoying! Wherever they go however, will have their own web-based collaboration system that they will be expected to use.

I used to be a teacher and one thing I would reconsider is having one assignment actually use the collaborative tools and have that as the focus. Although turning in a paper and receiving comments back online is a useful skill, that’s the easy part of online work (and may even come intuitively to this generation of tech savvy students). Most of the time, you find the “submit” button and you’re good to go.

Chances are in their college careers they will be responsible for working collaboratively on a project online. Although my program is an in-person program, lives are busy and more often than not, we meet online through chat systems such as Skype or Google Chat. Most of my projects are group based and through setting up the Google Doc, we can leave Q&A’s to each other, chat with others working on the document, add our info, edit peer work plus figure out when final edits for personal parts have to be done so the final edit/putting the paper together. Included in that is ensuring transitions work well with all the different writers of the paper without ignoring group members messages. THIS is by far, the hard aspect of working online and, IMHO, any experience your students get doing this now will be much more beneficial than just practicing handing in an assignment electronically.

http://www.zoesquare.com Zoe Square

My high schoolers are enrolled in Memoria Press Online Academy for a couple of classes but I’m not sure what program type they use. Maybe someone else uses them as well and can let us know? Every semester they seem to upgrade the system so it’s forever changing but in a better and easier to use way.

Juliette

We joined a co op for the first time this year. While I still have elementary and preschool aged children, in my former life 🙂 I was a high school history teacher. I am going to teach high school US History for the co op. I honestly hadn’t thought about anything like this. I am very excited to look at this as an option. Thanks for sharing!

Meredith

I’m also in grad school working on my masters in Elementary Ed., and I’m in a class completely centered technology in the classroom, and a huge focus is placed on using Google docs in the classroom to eliminate paper for the most part. I highly recommend checking it out! It’s so simple to use, and it can be accessed anywhere. As mentioned above, the collaborative tool is really great, especially with secondary students learning to workshop writing pieces.

http://www.iliveinanantbed.com I Live in an Antbed

What a great resource! I had never heard of it. Thanks for the review. 🙂

Wendy

I dint know all tha re Word. I’m gonna have to explore with what we already have too.

http://www.tumblr.com/blog/charissa-vaunderbroad Charissa

Thanks for sharing! I use Google docs currently and love that I can access my calendar and everything so conveniently. On the other hand, I do get frustrated by the formatting flaws and lack of annotation abilities. I am going to try this!